UK tops the charts in mobile broadband speed report

A new report finds that the UK has the fastest average mobile broadband speeds globally, beating the likes of South Korea, with a top average 3G and 4G connection speed of 20.4Mbps.

Content delivery network firm Akamai's report states that the UK's average mobile broadband connection speed in the first quarter of 2015 was twice as high as its nearest competitor, Denmark, which has an average speed of 10Mbps.

Surprisingly, South Korea, which has been deemed to have the most advanced mobile network globally, sat in fifth spot with mobile connection speeds of 8.8Mbps. Puerto Rico and Sweden went past the Asian country at third and fourth, with speeds of 9.6Mbps and 8.9Mbps, respectively.

The UK, however, did not maintain its lead in terms of average peak connection speeds when the mobile network was being tested by the most amount of people surfing the web on mobile devices at one time.

The UK ranked fifth in this measure. Australia topped this chart with a peak connection speed of 149.3Mbps, Japan at 126Mbps, Singapore at 116.4Mbps and Thailand at 105.4 Mbps.

Vietnam was country with the lowest mobile broadband speed - out of the 62 countries listed - at 1.3Mbps.

"We saw generally positive results across all of the key metrics during the first quarter of 2015," said David Belson, editor of the report for Akamai. "While connectivity will continue to differ across many regions, we see the highest broadband speeds in countries/regions with high population densities and strong government backing or support, as well as those that foster competition among internet providers."

In the UK, EE, O2, Vodafone and Three are providing the 4G network connectivity. Of the four, EE, which had a head start on the rest of the operators, said it has 10 million 4G customers, making it the biggest 4G network in the whole of Europe.